As of this writing, Hillary Clinton's national popular vote tally stands at exactly 64,478,925 to Donald Trump's 62,352,480, with an additional 7,169,272 people having voted for other candidates (Gary Johnson, Jill Stein, various other 3rd party candidates and a smattering of write-in votes). That means Clinton is ahead of Trump by over 2.1 million votes, and I understand there's still up to 1.5 million more left to count, mostly in California. By the time the dust settles, it's conceivable that she could lose the electoral college--and therefore the Presidency--while having beaten Trump by as many as 2.6 million votes.

UPDATE 8/12/18: I know I haven't posted anything new in a solid week; between being burnt out after last weekend's Rate Filing Blitz (20 state analyses in 2 days), Tuesday's Michigan primary and some other personal issues to deal with, the week sort of got away from me.

Reposting this again since today’s the 30th anniversary of my dad’s passing.

UPDATE 12/24/17: Another year has passed. Carrie Fisher has also died, along with Prince. Donald Trump is officially President of the United States and everything has turned to crap. And yet...the Affordable Care Act somehow managed to (mostly) survive the year (except for CSR reimbursement payments--which we've managed to turn into a net bonus thanks to a clever workaround whipped up by a combination of regulators, carriers and the exchanges--and the individual mandate, the fallout of which won't be fully apparent until around October 2018).

Everyone is posting various tributes to the late, great David Bowie today. Most will likely relate to Major Tom, Ziggy Stardust or Under Pressure.

For my part, I'm posting something a little different. Instead of anything from his music career, here's the clip of Bowie's brief but oddly appropriately-cast role as Pontius Pilate opposite Willem DaFoe in Martin Scorcese's "The Last Temptation of Christ".

I finally found time to take my wife and son to see "Star Wars: The Force Awakens" over the weekend. It wasn't perfect, of course, but it was still amazingly good; easily better than the Godawful Prequels, and somewhat better than Return of the Jedi. I'd call it on par with the original (nothing can match Empire Strikes Back, of course).

Anyway, I've seen lamentations from a few people who are under the impression that they're "the only one" who hasn't seen it yet. However, aside from the simple fact that more than one person stating this means, by definition, that they're not the only one, perhaps this will make those folks feel better:

I've watched the original Star Wars trilogy countless times, but ever since my kid was born, every time I watch something catches my eye which I never noticed (or noticed but didn't think about) before.

So, my 9-year old and I are watching "Return of the Jedi" again today (in anticipation of The Force Awakens, of course). In an early scene in Jabba's palace, Princess Leia is sneaking around at night, in the dark, trying to remain undetected so she can free Han Solo from the Carbonite, right? So what does she immediately do?

She bumps head first into a large wind chime which is inexplicably hanging in the stairwell.